Dark End of the Street

When E shot the holiest of messages to his fans, the ‘68 Comeback Special, He only had a few words of advice to D.J. and Scotty who were backin’ Him up: “Tell it like it is and play it dirty.” It was the first time that E had been in front of a live audience in eight years because of the secret deal He’d made with the government and President Kennedy to make films and help America’s youth. That night in ‘sixty-eight, He couldn’t even sit in the chair with the guitar. All them emotions was bubblin’ up to the surface. It was like that now for Jon; he felt an overwhelming need to kill Travers. Why couldn’t he be there, too? That’s why he was here. On this path.

A few minutes later, he and Perfect rounded the turn of a forgotten section of the Quarter at the place Ransom told them about. JoJo’s. Jon remembered the place from a dream somewhere. The lights were off with only a couple of neon signs burning purple and green in the long, fat window.

A sad old blues song played from the jukebox and floated out the open doors as a couple of men walked out carrying guitars and drums. One had a saxophone. The man with the sax, dressed like a Sun Records daddy in bowling shirt and baggy pants, hugged the neck of a large nigra woman before piling into the van with the others and disappearing down toward the Mississippi River.

“That her?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “If he comes back, Ransom said you could.”

Jon felt for the gun in his pocket. “It’s been a long time, Jack.”

“What?”

“It’s like a surge of electricity goin’ through you when you kill,” he said. “It’s almost like making love, but it’s stronger than that… Sometimes I think my heart is gonna explode.”

“He’s not here yet.”

“He will be,” Jon said. “I sense him.”

“Jon?”

He stopped halfway across Conti. A gaggle of businessmen in crooked party hats and drunker than a herd of goats filtered by them. Jon rubbed his beard, nodding at the neon lights quittin’ in the bar’s windows and the front door beginning to close.

All along the street, the buildings were real dark and vacant and seemed to wrap over him in a curve like in King Creole. Midnight in the French Quarter. Wooden business signs flappin’ from under balconies. Gas lamps burnin’ from a corner restaurant. He reached into his jacket for the pistol and nodded.

They hustled inside the bar, front door unlocked, as they saw the nigra woman turning chairs upside down onto the tables scattered by a stage.

“We closed,” she said, not even turning to look at them.

The woman moved real careful, unlit, and kind of shadowed across the dance floor. Jon walked backward to the door and slid the dead bolt into place with a solid thunk.

The woman slapped another chair onto the table and sunk her hands onto her tremendous hips: “Money gone, you sons a bitches. Got a couple cops about to roll by in two seconds, so you best get yo’ trashy asses back to Bourbon Street.”

Jon struck a match to his cheroot.

The jukebox glowed green and scattered twirling patterns across Perfect’s face and the woman’s. He hung back and waited for Perfect to begin the show. He watched through random spots in the glass for Travers.

Perfect walked four steps forward. The gun inches from the big woman’s heart. “No money,” she said.

The big woman nodded in the darkness, her face crossed with the knowin’.

“Your brother,” Perfect said. “Where is he? We’re not leavin’ till you tell us.”

“Well, then I’ll be cookin’ y’all breakfast,” she said. “ ’Cause I don’t know. Why? He owe y’all some money, too? If you see him, tell him he still owes me from nineteen sixty-five.”

Jon clamped the cheroot between his teeth and blew smoke into the green light. Funny twirling patterns of color and grayness passed over his eyes.

Perfect pressed a gun into the woman’s ribs and the woman held still. She glanced at Jon’s face and then returned her gaze to Miss Perfect. She nodded slowly and pressed her palms flat upon a barroom table. Leaning. She kept nodding.

“Okay,” she said. “I got you… But what you want Clyde for? He’s a sick man.”

Perfect ground the gun into her ribs. “Where is he? Where in Memphis? You give us an address, we have someone check it out and we’re out of your life. All right?”

“Okay,” the woman said. “Okay.”

“Where is he?” Perfect screamed. Then she looked over at Jon and the woman and shook her head like the whole dang situation made Miss Perfect sad. “I’m way too good for this,” she said.

The woman gave Perfect a good ole once-over from the shoes to her uncombed hair. She shook her head like Perfect wasn’t fit to spit-shine the bar’s toilets. “Sister, I don’t know what your man got on you, but you need to get your trashy country ass out of the big city. It’s showin’ all about you.”

Perfect gritted her teeth and rammed the handle of that old Colt she was carryin’ into the woman’s stomach, making her drop to her knees and start coughin’.

“I ain’t trash,” Perfect screamed. “Now where is he?”

Jon knew time was short. Answers had to come.

He knelt down and whispered, “Ole woman, where is he?”